A court in Samara suspended the “foreign agent” status of the coordinator of the regional “Voice”

The Samara District Court suspended the status of “foreign agent”, which was assigned to the coordinator of the regional branch of “Voice” Lyudmila Kuzmina. The head of the International Human Rights Association "Agora" Pavel Chikov reported this in his Telegram channel with reference to lawyer Vladimir Krasikov.

The court granted Kuzmina’s request to apply preliminary protective measures in the form of suspending the order of the Ministry of Justice. The human rights activist asks that the Ministry of Justice’s decision to include her in the register of “foreign agents” be declared illegal and demands exclusion from it.

“The suspension of status means that Kuzmina will not fulfill the duties imposed by the law on ‘foreign agents’ until the court decision on the claim against the Ministry of Justice comes into force,” notes Chikov.

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• The coordinator of “Voice” in the Samara region, Lyudmila Kuzmina, was added to the register of media outlets as “foreign agents” at the end of September. That day, 21 more people and two organizations were added to this register. At the same time, two more organizations were included in the register of NGOs - “foreign agents”, and OVD-Info was added to the register of unregistered public associations.
• The Golos movement was the first association that the Ministry of Justice included in the register of unregistered organizations - “foreign agents”.
• In 2017, the Investigative Committee terminated the criminal case against Lyudmila Kuzmina, initiated under the article on tax evasion (Article 199 of the Criminal Code). The case was initiated due to the fact that officials considered a grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) received before 2012 to the Golos-Povolzhye Foundation, which was headed by Kuzmina, as income and not a donation, and demanded that the NGO pay 2 million 222 thousand rubles tax. The statute of limitations in the case expired on March 28, 2015, but the court refused to satisfy Kuzmina’s application and close the case. In 2016, Kuzmina’s bank account, apartment and car were seized to pay off the tax debt. In June 2017, the Samara Regional Court returned the case for a new trial . In July, the court partially upheld the woman’s complaint against the investigator’s resolution, which he drew up in response to the tax service’s statement. During the consideration of the complaint, it turned out that he did not attach any documents or evidence to it.